Southern scenes

Warning: Visitors should be warned that several of the words, descriptions, and images from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper are considered racially offensive by today's standards. The materials are presented in order to give a true historical picture of the leading 19th-century newspaper's view of black Americans. We at the John B. Cade Library; Southern University and A&M College hope this site will serve as a valuable resource which provides an important perspective on the multifaceted history of black Americans, generates a deeper understanding and respect for the subject, and sparks further interest in its study and discussion.

Sketched by Special Artist. [The southern scenes accurately illustrate the life and social status of the negro on the Ashley and Cooper rivers, and the Sea Islands, particularly those within the jurisdiction of South Carolina. Their "garden patches" are sources of great profit, and very many cultivators are known to be among the richest of the laboring classes. The old theory, that negroes, without a master and the whip of the overseer, would relapse into barbarism, and become a burden to the whites, has been exploded. They are now acknowledged, even by the most prejudiced of the late "ruling classes" to be in the main industrious and frugal-saving up money against a rainy day. As a free, peasant population, they are infinitely more profitable to the South than they were when accounted "chattels" and in intelligence ranked but one or two removes from the brute creation. To-day they are the chief reliance of the whites in the cotton States; and this fact, not unknown to them, doubtless incites them to appear to the very best advantage among their "political compeers" of the Caucasian race, whose good-will they naturally and ardently seek. These sketches are truthful, and represent, first, early morning on the Ashley river; and second, taking vegetables by land to Charleston.
On the Ashley and Cooper rivers, scows are rowed down-stream, laden with such garden products as are salable in Northern ports].